MaxTrax Mounts - Finished

Decided to get stuck into the brackets today and finish them off, after taking a day off work. A week and a half ago, I gave them a lick of paint:

The paint in question is a Rustoleum pressure-pack - it's advertised as being able to stick to anything - rusted metal, aluminium, wood, plastic - you name it. Since I've had good results with rust-paint in the past in high-wear situations, I figured it was worth a shot. It's turned out really good, on both the alloy tube as well as the gal ubolts and nuts.

Once done, I mounted them onto the roofrack.


You can just make out the strips of rubber I cut to go under the ubolts and around the roof basket tube. My theory is that this will prevent the brackets from rubbing the paint/powdercoat off the basket and keep it nice for longer, as well as providing a bit of tension/squish for the mount point.


Popped out to Bunnings, and picked up some black end-caps for the ali tube. They needed to be "installed" with a rubber mallet, but they're nice and tight and snug - I don't ever think they're coming out. I was going to drill a hole in the lower ones as a drain point, but they've got some gaps in the corners, so I think they'll drain naturally that way. Not that they should take on much water to start with, since the tops are capped as well. They finish off the brackets really well though - well worth tracking them down.




This morning I cut out the large ali plate "washers" to go over the stainless rod and clamp the tracks down. These are bolted down with stainless wingnuts. It works, but it's a bit fiddly, since there's so many loose pieces. I'd prefer some sort of cam-lock setup, but are unsure of how I'd go about setting something like that up. At any rate, this will be our "travelling" setup, with the tracks clamped down tight. When we're off on a track or just out for a day-trip, I don't think we'll bother about bolting them on - we'll just throw a couple of ocky straps around them to hold them to the brackets, and that will be good enough.


Because of the design of the brackets, the tracks are held tight against the lower section of the bracket, and then against the top rail of the basket. This lets us use the top wingnuts to put a bit of tension on the tracks. My hope is that this will work like a springwasher, and means the wingnuts won't undo themselves as we drive. Again, this will only be used when we're driving long distances, just as an extra safety measure.

For security, we picked up a bike lock from BigW - one of those steel-rope-inside-a-plastic-sheath style ones - nice and light and easy to use, but cheap enough to throw away if it gets wrecked from being out in the salt water and sandy conditions. We'll just feed the wire rope through the middle handles of the tracks, and either around the basket, or around the basket AND through under the roof rails of the car - that should be pretty much bulletproof. As with anything, if someone really wants them, they'll find a way to take them, the only thing you can do is make it harder than someone elses, or make them need to make some noise. Hopefully this will be sufficient to keep them ours!

And that's it basically done! I'm really happy with how it's turned out - just as I envisaged it! Very happy indeed.